Fast and Furious was patterned from a Bush era operation called Wide Receiver. The purpose of Wide Receiver was to identify arrest and convict gun runners who would buy weapons on behalf of Mexican drug lords and then smuggle them across the border. Under Wide Receiver the US and Mexican Attorney Generals worked together and formed a plan of attack to try to snare these people via a coordinated sting. The guns had Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags placed in them, and either Mexican or American law enforcement agencies would arrest the gun runners shortly after making the purchase. Efforts were made to keep the weapons under surveillance at all times. There were 1400 arrests made, but guns ended up being lost despite these surveillance measures, so the project was dissolved in 2007.

In 2009 the Obama administration, for reasons and an end I can only make a guess at, rekindled this program and renamed it Operation Fast and Furious. But, they made a few changes. They decided the Mexican government did not need to know about it. The methods used for keeping the guns under surveillance were poorly thought out and were an abject failure. They made little or no effort to arrest the gun runners after the sales from legitimate gun sellers happened. So predictably most of those guns were lost, presumably to the drug lords. Finally instead of just 400 guns from Wide Receiver, 1765 guns were sold under Fast and Furious.

As a result, hundreds of Mexican citizens, ICE agent Jaime Zapata, and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry were killed with weapons that had been sold under Fast and Furious. The Dec 2010 murder of Brian Terry brought the program to attention of the American public. Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder denied in March 2011 that he knew about Fast and Furious, even though e-mails released by his Department of Justice (DOJ) say otherwise. There has been an ongoing Congressional investigation almost since F/F blew up. The DOJ has dragged their feet in providing documents to Congress concerning F/F. Eric Holder is about to be held in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over those documents pertaining to the operation. Obama has invoked Executive Privilege to thwart the investigation.

Here are my questions on this whole mess;

This is the blog that will piss off all of my school teacher friends and family. Let me apologize in advance. It is not my intent to minimize your contribution to society or the amount of work and passion that you put into your job. School teachers have a difficult and vital job and it is one that I would not do. I put a high value on what you do. So, Thank You and try not to take this personal.

I came across a Huffington Post article telling about a California school teacher, 9 year veteran, Michelle Apperson, who received a notice that she may be laid off due to budgetary issues. While these notices have become common place, what makes this article noteworthy is that Ms Apperson is the most recent recipient of her district’s Teacher of the Year Award.

My reaction was “This is probably the wrong teacher to lay off, but her complaint lies with her own union.”

Let me explain. In my opinion, school teachers are overpaid. (Let the shouts ring out, the arrows fly, and the oil begin to boil.) My statement is not a value judgment, it is a market judgment. But, let’s play the value judgment game for a minute, and compare teachers to nurses. I think most would agree that the two professions are essentially equal in their occupational contribution to society.

According to O-net, an occupational website that gathers information on jobs nationwide, a Secondary School Teacher, 87% of who have a BA and 13% have a Master’s degree, makes $54,270 on average, nationwide. The same website lists a Nurse Practitioner, 93% with Master’s Degree and 7% with a Doctorate or Professional degree making $65,950 on average, nationwide.

But, wait you say, the nurse makes more than the teacher. How can you say the teacher is overpaid, if both are societaly equal? Let’s make an adjustment for time worked. The vast majority of teachers get summer’s off. That means they work 9 months out of the year. The nurse works year round. Adjust that and the nurse is now making $5496 per month, and the teacher, $6030. The teacher makes about 10% more per month.

But let’s not stop there. 93% of the nurses have Master’s degree, while only 13% of the teachers do. The nurses had to invest much more time and money to get to where they are at. Then there are work hours. Teachers work M-F, 7AM to 3 PM, for the most part. Nurses can have shifts ranging around the clock, weekends, and holidays. Now let’s revisit time off. Teachers have two weeks off for Christmas and New Years, another week for Thanksgiving and another week for
Spring Break. Nurses have vacation time, but must be with their company for many years before they can get four weeks off, and then getting time off around the holidays is rationed, as it is with most businesses.

I’ve been on vacation this week, and recuperating from a bug I managed to pick up. Because I can’t be very active, and I can’t spend every waking moment writing, I have had the unpleasant opportunity to be exposed to day time TV. It is not the programming that I find objectionable. With the myriad of channels there is usually something I can stomach, and there is always TiVo. No what I found objectionable, bordering on disgusting is the commercials.

I generally don’t watch commercials. Since discovering TiVo, I merely delay when I begin watching a program and skip the commercials when they come up. But, this week Margo is in charge of the TV as I refused to just camp in front of it, and she will use it for background while she works a puzzle, game, or on the internet. So, I will sit down and get engrossed in some 50s or 60s black and white program and watch it live.

Doing so has unwittingly subjected me to in my opinion the worst part of capitalism; commercials geared towards stealing money; legally. You know the type. In the 45 minutes or so I watched today I saw two different legal firms touting how they could get you disability payments from
Social Security. I saw two different companies telling you how you could get a mobility scooter to wheel you around, and I didn’t even try to count the number of ads from online colleges or trade schools.

So what’s wrong with that you ask? Every one of these ads are geared towards someone sitting on their ass at home. They sell a promise of something for nothing. I will grant partial dispensation for the educational ads; at least they will be attempting to teach a trade or marketable skill. But, face facts, the vast majority of people these ads appeal to are the people sitting at home wanting to be given something. 

They want a quick education to earn them a job that will earn six figures. They want a free scooter. They want a check from the government. Well we can’t afford this compassion at someone else’s expense. That scooter is not free; taxpayers are footing the bill. The education is not free; someone takes out a loan that is guaranteed by the taxpayers. That disability check is not free; again the taxpayers are on the hook. 
 
I am not against helping out people in need. But the manner in which we do it invites fraud and is inefficient. Do you wonder why education costs have far out stripped the pace of inflation? The federal government guarantees the loans. The schools know this, so they don’t care who they sign up. If they can qualify for a student loan they are in. Aptitude, intelligence, and desire, are secondary. When the graduate, or drop out for that manner, and can’t pay, the taxpayers stand behind the loan. The schools have minimal incentive to lower their costs. They raise their rates and the government guarantees more loan money. There is currently more student loan debt
than credit card debt in America. How scary is that?

I genuinely applaud every person out there who takes out a loan, gets an education, and then works to pay back what they owe. That situation applies to the vast majority of